


Past Present Imperfect

by Nightdog_Barks



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Drama, Drunkenness, First Kiss, Friendship, Future Fic, Kissing, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-11-30
Updated: 2007-11-30
Packaged: 2017-10-18 04:56:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/185265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nightdog_Barks/pseuds/Nightdog_Barks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times House and Wilson kissed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Past Present Imperfect

**Author's Note:**

> This little story moves through five phases of House and Wilson's lives, in sections (very) loosely based on Greek verb tenses. Under no circumstances should this be considered any kind of a treatise on the same. [This](http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0052&query=id%3D%2313) is the reference source I used; I hope I haven't mangled things _too_ badly.

_**Houseficlet: Past Present Imperfect**_  
 **STATUS:** Crossposted to [](http://house-wilson.livejournal.com/profile)[**house_wilson**](http://house-wilson.livejournal.com/) on 11/30/07.  
 **TITLE:** Past Present Imperfect  
 **AUTHOR:** [](http://nightdog-writes.livejournal.com/profile)[**nightdog_writes**](http://nightdog-writes.livejournal.com/)  
 **PAIRING:** House/Wilson  
 **RATING:** R, for rough language and two men kissing under various circumstances.  
 **WARNINGS:** None.  
 **SPOILERS:** Yes, for general goings-on in Season 4, up through episode 4.03, "97 Seconds."  
 **SUMMARY:** Five times House and Wilson kissed.  
 **DISCLAIMER:** Don't own 'em. Never will.  
 **AUTHOR NOTES:** This little story moves through five phases of House and Wilson's lives, in sections (very) loosely based on Greek verb tenses. Under no circumstances should this be considered any kind of a treatise on the same. [This](http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0052&query=id%3D%2313) is the reference source I used; I hope I haven't mangled things _too_ badly.  
 **BETA:** My intrepid First Readers, with especial thanks to [](http://deelaundry.livejournal.com/profile)[**deelaundry**](http://deelaundry.livejournal.com/) for her encouragement and repeated use of the word "yay."

  
 **Past Present Imperfect**

  
 _  
Specific Future   
_

The first time they kissed, they were both drunk.

"Mmmm," Wilson slurred, brushing his lips against House's cheek. It felt like kissing a scrub brush. Or ... a porcupine. "Pork u pine," he enunciated slowly. He could smell the beer on his own breath -- it was yeasty-sweet and reminded him of ... what? The memory was gone.

House laughed. "Yer _drunk,"_ he announced.

"So'ar you," Wilson mumbled, moving to House's lips.

"Yeah, but I'm not the one talking 'bout ... 'bout _marsupials."_

Wilson pressed his lips gently to House's own and considered the feeling. House's lips were dry and a little chapped. Women's lips weren't always necessarily softer, but they were always ... sticky. Sticked. Lipsticked, that was it. Red and glossy and slippery, and you could slide right off them and then they'd catch you in their hands and hold you there like a fluttering moth.

These weren't women's lips.

"Not marsupls," House decided.

House's lips felt funny moving against his, and that was different too. Women didn't talk when you kissed them. Not usually, anyway.

Wilson opened his eyes, even though he didn't want to. This was warm, and comfortable, and House was the first guy he'd kissed in ...

House's eyes, blue and vivid and dilated, stared back at him.

"Hystricomorpha," he announced, pulling away from Wilson. Wilson tried to follow but had to catch himself with one hand on House's right thigh when he started to overbalance. House looked at him blearily.

"Hys ... tricomorpha," he said again. It sounded like a hiccup. "Almos' sure of it. Where's the 'cyclopedias?"

Wilson flopped back against the couch and ran one hand through his hair.

"Bedroom, prob'ly. Where they always end up."

House considered this. "Volume P too?"

Wilson stared at the ceiling. The water stain that had been there when he'd moved in was still there.

"Prob'ly." He patted awkwardly at House's back. "C'mon."

House didn't look around. "Why?" he said, and Wilson noticed he suddenly sounded a lot less drunk. "Save it for your wife."

"Uh?" Wilson said. He stopped staring at the ceiling. Just as well -- it was starting to rotate anyway. "'M not married."

"But you will be. Next week." House patted him on the leg, and for just a moment Wilson wanted to take his hand and hold it and trace the lifelines on House's palm. "Sonia's good for you -- you'll live in a split-level ranch and have 2.3 kids and a dog the kids'll name Mr. Blinkers. You'll rake in the big bucks and join the only country club that takes Jews, and you'll play golf every Wednesday with guys named Ned and Ted." His eyes softened a little. "You'll do fine." He levered himself off the couch and went into the bedroom, presumably in search of the elusive letter P.

Wilson laid his head back against the couch and blew breath out through his lips. They made a _pbtthhhh_ sound, like in a cartoon.

"But I don't _want_ to play golf with Ned and Ted," he told the water stain.

House didn't come back out, and after a while Wilson fell asleep on the couch.

  
 _  
Jussive Future   
_

The second time they kissed, only House was drunk.

"Kiss me," he commanded, pinning Wilson hard against the door jamb.

"Fuck, House," Wilson growled, trying to push him away and at the same time hold him up.

"Like to," House snapped back. "Leg makes it a little difficult now." Wilson wrinkled his nose; House was right in his face and he could smell the whiskey fumes rising from his pores.

"Where's Stacy?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?"

"God damn it, House, this isn't a game." Wilson took a deep breath and tried to calm himself. "How many Vicodin have you taken? You know there are contraindications with alcohol -- "

"Shut _up,"_ House rumbled, and Wilson felt the vibrations in his own chest as House pressed even closer. Even with half the muscles cut out of his quad and balanced precariously on crutches, the man was still strong.

House kissed him.

His lips crushed into Wilson's, their teeth jarring and scraping against each other. Wilson felt something warm and wet and _foreign_ , and realized with no small shock that it was House's tongue. He tried to protest, but House's mouth had formed a virtual vacuum seal over his own.

It was like being subsumed by some elemental force of nature, and when Wilson finally managed to break free, he was gasping for air.

"You bastard," he rasped out. "Is that the way you kiss Stacy?"

"No," House said. "It's the way I kiss you." He swung his right crutch like a golf club, and Wilson ducked quickly away as it smashed into the wall beside the door jamb. "Now get the fuck out of here before I do something really stupid."

  
 _  
Gnomic Future   
_

The third time they kissed, only Wilson was drunk.

"You wanna know what the truth is, House?" he asked, and then squinted. Where was House? The first slow notes of Satie's _Gymnopedie_ filled the apartment.

Oh yeah. House was at the piano.

"No, but I'm sure you'll tell me anyway." Wilson could practically _hear_ the eye-rolling from all the way across the room. Didn't matter. House needed to hear it anyway.

"Th'truth is ... the truth is, you can't _handle_ the truth!" Satisfied, Wilson plunked his empty beer bottle down beside the other five.

House snorted. "You're quoting from a movie, you idiot."

"Doesn' make it any less true."

"And that's your considered opinion?"

Wilson shook his head. "It's the _truth_ ," he declared. How many times was he going to have to say this?

"You're pathetic," House muttered. He continued to play the piano, obviously concentrating on the notes instead of Wilson.

"Am not!" Wilson pushed himself up from the sofa, holding onto the arm in order to steady himself. " _You_ are!" On some level he was aware that this sounded painfully like a grade-school argument, not unlike the one he'd had with Jeff Timonides when they were both eight, except then they'd been calling each other "poopyhead."

House ignored him, so Wilson filled up the silence with his own words as he stumbled in the general direction of the piano.

"Pathetic," he repeated. "You ... don' have anybody, and nobody has you, an it's all _you!_ "

"God, I wish I had a tape recorder," House mumbled.

Wilson stopped for a moment and waited until the floor settled down. When it did, he tiptoed the last few steps -- floors were _tricky_.

House was sitting slightly hunched over; this close, the piano was much louder, and House's broad shoulders moved just a little every now and then with the music.

"You push everyone away," Wilson said quietly. "Everbody." He leaned forward, so that his face was level with House's. "Even me. Me 'specially. But ... but I keep coming back."

"Yeah?" House still hadn't turned his head, still wouldn't look at him. "And why is that?"

Wilson kissed him on the line of his jaw, very gently. A mere brush of lips.

"'Cause I'm _pathetic_."

He overbalanced then and grabbed House's right shoulder. The wrong key, loud and discordant, echoed throughout the apartment.

  
 _  
Future More Vivid   
_

The fourth time they kissed, nobody was drunk. And maybe that was the problem. If House had been drunk, maybe he wouldn't have done this stupid thing, the latest in a long series of stupid things he only tended to do when dead cold sober. A drunken House was a House who couldn't concentrate long enough to do the stupid things -- it was when his mind was razor-sharp, telescoping down to one thought and one thought only, that he rode his bike too fast. Pissed off police detectives. Stuck a knife in a wall socket. Or did something like this.

" _Breathe, God damn it_ ," Wilson snarled. "Come on, House, I want you to fucking _breathe!_ "

He looked up. House's team -- what the hell were their names, anyway? Thirteen? Nine? They were standing around, their eyes big and bright like deer caught in headlights.

"Get a _cart_ in here," he ordered, and when they still didn't move, he shouted at them, emptying his lungs in a satisfying explosion of sound. " _MOVE!_ "

They moved then, scattering like quail.

He kissed House again, blowing in two long, slow breaths. His thumb and index finger fit perfectly into the little hollows on either side of House's nose, and House's mouth tasted faintly of coffee and sweet milk. House's chest rose and fell with Wilson's effort.

"Breathe," Wilson ordered again. "Do you hear me? House?" He blew again, his lips sealed tight around House's. "Damn it, House."

Someone was shouting outside the Diagnostics conference room -- help was on its way, hold on, voices dissolving into a roar of static.

Two more breaths, House's chest expanding and contracting.

Wilson paused; he was hot and his own heart was pounding. "House, you son of a bitch," he said. "If you never do anything else for me again, do _this one thing now._ "

  
 _  
Future Most Vivid   
_

"No, seriously, what would you have done?"

Wilson squinches his eyes shut against the early-morning sunlight and blows a long, exasperated breath out through his nose.

"House. That was years ago."

"So you shouldn't have any problem talking about it."

"And yet I don't want to. Go figure."

House shifts in the bed, props his head on his left hand. Wilson can feel his eyes on him, along with the slow warmth from the sunbeams angling across the bed.

"Would you have gotten married again? Seeing as how I wouldn't have been there to stop you?"

"Oh, _God_ ," Wilson groans. "Yes. Yes, I would have gotten married again, and this time it would've taken, and we would have lived in the suburbs and had kids and a dog and I would've played golf on the weekend with my bestest friends ever, Ned and Ted." He opens his eyes; House's eyes are there, bright and blue and alive.

"You _remember_ that conversation? That was years ago!"

"Just like what you keep asking about," Wilson mutters. "Happy now?"

House shrugs; it's an odd gesture with just one shoulder free. "I'd be a lot happier if I didn't have to get up in an hour to go to this stupid dedication. People shouldn't have things named after them until after they're dead."

"Yes, well. There are probably still a few of your former patients around who would be glad to remedy that little oversight."

"People I cured!" House protests.

"People you almost killed in the process." Wilson stretches his legs and winces a little. He thinks he's getting arthritis in his left knee. "Come on, it'll be like old times. And I know you're looking forward to seeing Cuddy again."

"Old folks at home," House mutters. "All of us."

"Too old for _this?_ "

"No," House allows after a moment. "Not this. Although sometimes I wish we'd gotten here a little sooner."

"What was stopping you?" It's warm here, next to House's long body, and he can feel himself falling asleep again. House's voice is a low rumble in his right ear.

"You. You were always such a lousy kisser."

"Was not," Wilson murmurs.

"Was so," House says, and covers his mouth with his own.

~ the end.


End file.
